How Gender Biases Blurred. An Experiment with High-Skilled Soccer Players

Abstract

Whether one looks at revenue, public and private investment, or media coverage; men's sports consistently do better than women's sports. Many people argue that these differences are driven by absolute differences in the quality of athletes in men's and women's sports. We begin by noting that absolute differences in athletic skill often do not drive demand in sports. We then move on to our primary research question: Can people truly see differences in men and women athletes? To answer this question, we use videos of professional women’s and men’s soccer. In some videos the gender of the athletes was clear to see. In other videos, though, the gender of the athletes was blurred. We find that participants only rate men’s soccer videos higher when the gender of the players is visible. These findings reveal a bias in the evaluation of men’s and women’s soccer relevant for many other fields. Our results demonstrate that factors other than performance, e.g., social beliefs and stereotypes, have an important influence on how individuals evaluate women in sports.